There was once a prince named Peredur who ruled over the land of Dyfed.
One day, Peredur received news from the borders of his land. An evil power had been gathering strength in the north. There were reports of black clouds rushing southwards across the sky, faster than running horses, and when the rain spilled from them it turned men blind and caused small children to fall unconscious and wither away in a dead sleep. Lightning flared from the sky, striking villages and burning them to ash. Great flocks of crows invaded the forests and killed all the other birds and insects, so that when you walked through the woods there were only crow-calls and silence and the thorns growing wild and unkempt.
Peredur wished to see for himself this devastation and put an end to it. He drew together a band of his strongest men and set off into the forest. As they rode north the birdsong died away. Thorns straggled across their path and the air grew cold, frosting their breath like cobwebs.
They came upon a village in a small clearing overgrown with weeds. The village headsman came out to greet them. He was not yet forty, though his face was tired and hollowed, and his eyes a sightless white. He was the oldest man left in the village.
“The black rain,” he said. “Look what it has done to us, my prince. The crops rot in the ground, the elderly have perished in the damp, and my son lies even now in a dead sleep. All the other children have sunk into death already.”
“Where is your son?” asked Peredur. “Take me to him.”
The man shrugged, for he saw no hope, and led the prince into his small wooden house. The child, a boy of perhaps ten, lay pale and lifeless on a bed, his mother watching over him.
Peredur approached the bed. He laid his hand on the boy’s forehead. Instantly, the boy opened his eyes, and upon seeing the face of the prince he cried out, “My lord!”
“A miracle,” gasped the father, as the mother fell on her child and kissed his cheeks. “Thank you, my prince.”
“Please,” said the boy, “my lord, take me with you. My life is yours, for you have saved me from the black sleep.”
“Gladly,” said Peredur. “It is time you were made a man. You will ride north with us to seek the evil that has brought forth this devastation.”
The boy’s mother packed his things and he bid his parents farewell. A small horse was found for him.
Peredur told the boy’s father, “Now you must rally. Replant your crops, fortify your village and prepare for winter. We will return before the year is out.”
The father bowed. “Be careful to the north, lord. Folks say a great bog has opened up where once there were meadows. The land there is cursed.”
As they rode out of the village, they came upon a man kneeling in the mud outside his home. He was concentrating fiercely on a tiny contraption made from wood. Next to him was a bucket in which a mouse ran round and round in circles, crying and squealing piteously.
“Who is that man, Owain?” Peredur asked the young boy.
“Oh, that’s Manawydan,” said the boy. “He’s gone crazy since the black clouds came. He says the mice have been eating his bags of grain. He’s going to hang that mouse, to set an example to the rest of them.”
“Manawydan,” called Peredur. “Is this true?”
The man looked up. He was half-blind: one eye was a yellowy-white, as though filled with boiled cream, and the other was clear but dulled with hunger. “They’re pests, you fool. Hang ’em all.”
“How dare you speak to your prince like that!” cried the boy Owain.
“Shut it, pipsqueak,” snarled Manawydan. “Just let me get this noose tied on. There!”
He held up his tiny wooden gallows. A noose of grimy string dangled from the crossbeam.
“It won’t work,” Peredur stated in a voice of great authority. “Don’t you know, it’s impossible to hang mice? They have too thick a neck relative to the head. Give the mouse to me. I’ll see that he’s properly punished.”
“You will?” said Manawydan suspiciously.
“There are procedures for these things,” said Peredur. “He’ll have to be sentenced for theft. The law will decide his punishment.”
“And he’ll be made an example of, eh?” said Manawydan. “He’ll be rotting in a jail the rest of his life?”
“Assuredly,” said Peredur. “Hand him over, now.”
Manawydan snatched the mouse from the bucket. He approached Peredur, looking nervously around with his one eye at the prince’s men, whom he seemed not to have noticed before.
“Give the mouse to Owain,” said Peredur. “He’ll be well guarded until he’s brought to justice.”
Manawydan handed the little mouse up to Owain and then bowed deeply, retreating into his house.
Peredur and his men rode on. Eventually little Owain said, “Lord, are you really going to have this mouse imprisoned?”
“This mouse has done no wrong,” said Peredur. “Look after him. He’s in my service now.”
As they rode farther north, it grew darker and colder by the hour. They passed more villages, all abandoned, the houses rotten with rain. To keep himself from becoming afraid, Peredur called to mind instead the face of his young bride, for he was recently married and the thought of her gave him courage.
Eventually they approached the edge of the forest. The trees thinned and diminished in size, but where between them should have been light there was only a pearly grey mist, as though the world had been wiped clear of its matter. Time seemed to fade until there was only one time, neither day nor night, through which they moved with unbearable slowness. It took them an hour to clear a patch of thorns; two hours to traverse the thicket at the edge of the woods; four to wade through the dead, blackened patch of nettles beyond it.
At last they were out. Peredur stood a moment as though blinded, the weight of the creeping grey fog pressing unnaturally on his eyes. Gradually he began to see the contours of the land beyond, and his heart fell within his chest. Before him lay a gigantic, festering bog, great stinking hummocks of moss sunk deep in fetid water, with trackless streams of mud oozing between the hollows. The smell of it made the horses balk.
“What now, sir?” said the men fearfully, for none of them could conceive of wading into that foul marsh.
“On,” said Peredur.
He drove his horse forwards, but the animal had gone scarcely a step before it began to snort in terror. The turgid green mud sucked at its hooves, clawing up its legs like a living thing.
“Sir,” said Owain, “I’m the smallest. Let me try the path first.”
Peredur was unwilling to put the young boy in danger, but he could see the sense of it. Owain climbed down from his pony and edged into the bog. He placed his feet with caution, trying to find solid ground, but with each step the mud gave until he was almost up to his knees.
“Owain, get back,” ordered Peredur. “It’s not safe.”
At that moment a small grey shape sprang out of Owain’s glove and leaped down to the surface of the mud. The mouse paused there, tiny feet splayed. He did not sink. He took a step and still did not sink. Slowly, the mouse felt out a path, inching from one hummock to the next. Owain drew in his breath and followed. The mud held.
“This way, my lord,” he called.
“Sir, no,” exclaimed one of the men.
“With me,” Peredur commanded. “Leave the horses.”
In this manner they entered the swamp: the mouse leading, inch by slow inch, Owain following, the men in his wake.
The mist closed around them and blocked out the sky. It would have been dark but for a strange sort of light, a yellowish glow growing deep beneath the mud, as though the sun had been buried in the bog. Peredur began to feel an odd sense of vertigo.
They walked for hours. Once they tried to rest, but the moment they sat on the mossy hummocks a deathly weariness came over them. More than one man tried to lie down in the mud until the prince shouted at them to stand up and move on. The glow beneath the mud became a deep red, like a layer of blood below the water. The sky darkened but the pearly fog persisted around them with its grey gleam.
One of the men, half-asleep on his feet, slipped from the path that the mouse was picking out for them. He stumbled to the side, his hands flailing. Within an instant he was waist-deep in thick, putrid mud. His fellows tried to catch his hands and pull him out, but he was sinking rapidly.
“Arawn!” cried the prince.
“My lord,” Arawn said in panic, “the water is hot below my feet. I am being pulled down into Hell!”
“No,” said Peredur. “You must trust me, Arawn. There is no hell for brave men such as you.”
Arawn gasped and his face sank out of sight below the mud.
The party stood in silence, consumed with shock at their loss. Presently the mouse moved on and they had no choice but to follow.
The darkness was unchanged. They could have been walking for one day or six. The men were lost in grief for Arawn, while Peredur felt undone by anxiety about their quest. Perhaps he was unwise to have led his men into danger. Perhaps they should turn back.
But without the mouse they would never find their way, and the mouse went on.
Many hours later, a peculiar buzzing filled the air. The men looked around nervously but could see only fog, blank and unending. All at once a great flock of insects, tar-black and as big as birds, rose up out of the mud around them and swarmed towards the men.
“Courage!” shouted Peredur, drawing his sword. “Stay on the path! Owain, protect the mouse!”
For the creatures seemed bent on carrying off their little guide. Again and again they swooped towards the mouse. Owain threw himself on the ground, clutching the mouse to his chest, and the insect-things tore viciously at his back and shoulders. Mud whirred from their wings as they droned through the air, hurtling at the men’s faces, snapping and slashing with steely pincers. Peredur swung his sword and with all his might brought it down on the biggest of the creatures, cracking it open along the carapace. With a furious clamoring and buzzing the creatures withdrew and sank once more into the surrounding mud.
Peredur hurried to see to his men. All were injured with cuts and minor wounds, but by some miracle none had fallen from the path. Owain bore the worst of the injuries. His shirt had been torn to pieces and hung from his back in tatters when he stood, wincing and bleeding, with the mouse held against his heart.
“Young Owain,” said Peredur, “to reward your bravery in protecting our guide, I name you my thane and promise you a land-holding and great riches upon our return.”
He draped his own cloak around the shivering boy, whose eyes brimmed with tears at this honor. Owain set the mouse back on the path and they continued through the bog.
Some hours later, or perhaps some days, a shape became visible in the fog ahead of them. The men drew their swords. They could hear nothing other than a slight creaking sound, as though of rope. As they drew nearer a terrible smell reached them.
“That’s a gallows,” said one of the men.
The gibbet reared out of the mist. It was some way off the path, but they could see corpses—the source of the dreadful smell—rotating in slow circles on their ropes. The corpses were rotted and looked to have been there for a long time, decaying silently in the wet, dead air.
The men grew quiet as they approached the long gallows. Drawing nearer, the prince saw the face of the first corpse and cried out suddenly in horror, for its face was his own.
They looked closer. Each of the men saw his own corpse hanging from the gallows. The boy Owain was there, his little frame limp, his face half-decomposed. Next to him swung a mouse, its neck snapped in a tiny noose.
The last corpse in the row was twisting on its rope, which creaked gauntly in the still air. As they approached, they saw that it was Arawn.
“He’s still alive!” screamed one of the men. “Look, sir, his feet are kicking!”
“Stay where you are!” Peredur ordered in a harsh voice.
“But sir, he’ll die!”
“I command you to stay on the path!” shouted Peredur. “Arawn is dead in the bog behind us. This is some trick, some evil at work, trying to draw us into the marsh.”
And so they stood, their hearts torn apart with anguish, as Arawn on the gallows jerked his legs and turned in helpless circles and finally fell still, his face a mask of horror, urine dripping blackly from his feet.
With the gallows behind them, the grey mist seemed to thicken until it obscured all but a few feet to either side of the path. An icy edge entered the fog and brought it to freeze in droplets on the men’s hair. Owain stopped frequently to hold the mouse inside his shirt for a few minutes at a time, warming its sharp little feet against his skin until it could go on.
The walls of a great castle loomed at last through the fog. The stones, if stones they were, seemed encrusted with ice so that they sparkled in the grey light. Peredur halted, tilting his head back, but the walls extended up into the fog as far as he could see.
“What is this place?” asked the men.
“This is the source of the evil that has come upon our land,” said Peredur. “It must be the home of a great sorcerer.”
They made their way along the wall in search of a gate. They walked for a long time. There were no corners to the wall, only a vague curve which they followed on and on, with no gate in sight. It was impossible to tell if they had made a full circuit. At one point Peredur stopped and stuck his wooden shield upright in the mud as a marker. Some hours later they came once more upon the shield. It had fallen over and the wood of it was rotted away as though it had lain there a hundred years. When Peredur picked it up, it fell apart in his hands.
“We must rest, my lord,” said the men.
Peredur agreed, but forbade any of them to sleep, for he was mindful of the evils of that bog. They sat with their backs to the icy wall and ate some bread and dried meat from their packs.
After only a few moments, a man came walking towards them. He appeared to be circling the walls in the opposite direction to them; it puzzled the prince that they had not come across him before. Then he recognized the man and cried out, “Arawn!”
It was indeed Arawn. He was bewildered but unquestionably alive. The men greeted him with joy. He did not remember how he had come to be there, nor why he was walking round and round the walls of this castle.
“We thought you had drowned in the bog!” the men said to him.
“I don’t remember any bog,” said Arawn, but even as he said it he was looking out at the swamp which stretched for miles around them, and he became confused.
“Have you seen a gate?” Peredur asked. “Any way into this castle?”
“There’s a door just back there,” said Arawn, pointing. “I tried knocking, though, and no one answered.”
The men leapt up and urged him to lead them to this door. Still puzzled, Arawn set off back the way he had come. Soon they arrived at a door, just as he had said: a small wooden door, set into the ice-encrusted wall, which had not been there before.
The men started to hammer at the door, shouting and clamoring, but Peredur ordered them to step back. “I have a notion,” he said, “that only a man of royal birth may seek entry to this castle. Arawn, knock at this door and announce me in your loudest voice, if you will.”
Arawn looked more confused than ever, but he did as the prince said. As the echoes of his voice died away, they heard the grating sound of a latch being lifted within.
The wooden door opened, releasing a blast of icy air into the bog, and a man who was the double of Arawn looked out. Seeing the other Arawn stood in the bog, one fist still raised to knock, he looked alarmed, and clutched the edge of the door in fear.
The Arawn in the bog stared back at him, and then at the prince, who looked from one Arawn to the other in horror.
“Who are you?” asked the Arawn who had opened the door.
No one spoke. Peredur blinked sharply, trying to rid his eyes of this strange spell.
“I can’t let you in unless I know you,” said the Arawn inside the door.
“But surely you know us,” said Owain timidly. “You are one of us.”
The Arawn inside the door looked for a long time at Owain, glancing suspiciously from time to time at the other Arawn. Then he said, “I do seem to recognize you, right enough, young master. As though I knew ye long ago.”
“You can’t have known me long ago,” Owain pointed out. “I’m only ten years of age.”
Arawn rubbed his chin with one hand. “Well,” he said at last. “You best come in.”
They entered, one at a time. The other Arawn was last, but when he tried to enter, the Arawn who held the door stopped him. “Not you,” he said.
“My lord?” said the Arawn who stood in the bog, looking to the prince for help.
“Wait here for us, Arawn,” said Peredur uneasily.
One Arawn stepped back into the bog to wait, and the other Arawn closed the door on him.
They were in a narrow passageway, lit by its own light, for the walls were of the same ice-crystal stone as those outside and it glowed whitely. Peredur and his men followed Arawn along the passageway. Owain had picked up the mouse, who was frightened of walking on the strange white-shining floor, and tucked him safely back inside his glove.
At the end of the passageway was a door made of iron. Peredur stepped forward, reminding himself to be brave, and knocked.
The sound of his knocking echoed wetly around the icy walls. Some drips fell from the ceiling. As the echoes died away the door swung open, and another Peredur stood on the other side of it.
The men began to whisper and shudder, all but Arawn, who had averted his eyes as though embarrassed. Peredur gazed at his own double. He reminded himself that this was but a trick, like the gallows in the bog.
“Good day to you,” he said to the other prince. “We seek the sorcerer who dwells in this castle.”
“I don’t know of any sorcerer,” said the other prince, “but I can’t let you through this door.”
“What must we do to gain entry?” asked Peredur.
“Oh, your men may enter,” said the other prince. “And this young boy. Just not you.”
“We won’t leave you, my lord,” said the men at once.
Peredur thought carefully. His men were looking from one prince to the other, their eyes blank with fear. At length Peredur said, “You must. Go through this door and seek the sorcerer. I will wait here.”
The other prince held the door wide. Reluctantly, the men walked through it. The other prince nodded to Peredur, a farewell nod, and closed the door.
A strange thing then happened: as the door swung shut, Peredur found himself standing on the other side of it, holding its handle as it closed, though he had not moved an inch. He turned abruptly and looked around for the other prince, the one who had first opened the door. But he was alone with his men and Owain. Peredur wanted to open the door again and see if he himself still stood on the other side of it, but he was scared to lose the trust of his men. He gazed for a long moment at Arawn, wondering if he had experienced the same oddity, but Arawn avoided his eyes.
They started down the next corridor. It curved slightly, as though they were heading towards the center of a spiral. At last they found a huge wall of ice barring their way. In front of it sat a small man robed in furs.
“My good fellow,” said Peredur, “we seek the man who is master of this castle.”
“You’ll have a long seek, then,” said the small man, politely enough. “This castle be owned by no man.”
“Well then, whom do you serve?” Peredur demanded.
“The Queen, o’course,” said the man.
“And who might this Queen be?” asked Peredur.
“Pass through these doors,” said the man, indicating the wall of ice, “and you’ll see. Although you may not come out the same on t’other side.”
Seeing no handle nor hinge to the ice, Peredur said, “How do we pass through?”
“How do you walk across a room?” said the man, nonplussed. “You just pass through, m’lord.”
Peredur reached out to touch the ice. It gave a little to his touch, and when he pushed he could feel his hand sinking into it as though into water. It was very cold.
He said, “We must walk through this ice?”
“One at a time, if y’please,” said the man, nodding graciously.
“Let me go first, my lord,” offered one of the men.
Peredur was more frightened of the ice than he cared to admit. He stepped back, and the volunteer squared his shoulders and walked swiftly through the ice, disappearing completely beyond it.
They waited, but he did not reappear. A few of the men called after him. In the end Peredur saw no option but to follow. He did so quickly, before he could change his mind.
It was like walking through a wall of freezing mist. He closed his eyes and could feel the cold settling into his bones and his very soul. A deep weariness engulfed him as though from nowhere. Upon reaching the other side, he opened his eyes and saw a glittering hall, taller than any he had seen, ringed with pillars of ice. At one end stood a beautiful white throne whose carved back reached up towards the rafters.
Peredur looked around for the man who had passed through before him but saw only a naked baby, crying noisily on the floor, which was also of ice. He hurried towards the baby, his feet slipping and skidding, and gathered it to his chest. The baby’s skin was an angry red from the cold.
Behind him there was a noise like something rising from deep water, and he turned to see a line of children following him out of the ice wall. They were of various ages, some almost into their teens, some toddling on tiny legs, one crawling infant. They came and stared up at him. Peredur realized with horror that these were his men.
Lastly through the door came a young man, tall, handsome, and in the prime of life. He was strongly muscled and wore Peredur’s cloak over his broad shoulders.
“Owain?” said Peredur in disbelief.
“My lord?” said Owain, his voice deep and rich, but equally frightened. “What has happened to you?”
“To me?” said Peredur, but at the sound of his own voice—a thin, spidery voice, an old man’s croak—he knew. He looked into the ice wall and saw his reflection withered and white-haired, his skin furrowed with age. “This is some great devilry,” he whispered. “What has she done to us?”
“I’ve done nothing,” said a beautiful voice. “You chose to pass through the ice, and you are not the same on the other side. The doorman did warn you.”
The voice had come from the far end of the hall, where the great throne rose into the heights. The sparkling white of the ice confounded their eyes and they could see nothing. Some of the younger children started to cry.
“Show yourself,” Peredur tried to shout, but it came out a wizened croak.
Out of the whiteness came a tall figure. She was taller than the prince by a head, taller even than this newly tall Owain. She approached lightly on bare feet which seemed not to feel the cold. A cloak of white fur fell to her ankles and a crown of silver frost adorned her head. She was more beautiful than any woman Peredur had ever seen, more beautiful even than his beloved bride. She stood before them and smiled. Peredur was close enough to see the wintral white of her eyes.
“Now, my good men, and boys,” she said, glancing at the group of children. “What can I do for you?”
Peredur croaked, “Begging your pardon, my lady, but we came here to kill you.”
“Is that so?” said the Queen.
“Great Queen,” said Peredur, “you have brought terrible destruction on our lands with your evil magic, and we must put an end to it.”
“Would it alter your approach at all,” she asked with a sweet smile, “if I told you that, once you leave here, you will not in fact know whether you have killed me or not? You won’t even remember what purpose you had in coming here.”
“I don’t know what type of sorcery you intend to work on us,” Peredur began stoutly, “but—”
“It’s not sorcery, my dear prince,” she interrupted. “It’s only that, in order to leave this place, you must pass once more through the bog. And the bog does strange things to a man’s recollections.”
“You’ve filled it with your evil powers, that’s why,” put in Arawn, in his high child’s voice.
The Queen turned her lovely quiet eyes on Arawn, making him feel at once light as air and heavy as water. “The bog is Time,” she said, “and all Time is in the bog. Having crossed it, dear men, you cannot go back the same way. Just as it is with the world.”
“If we kill you,” asked Peredur, his aged heart thrumming, “will we be trapped here? Within this castle?”
The Queen shrugged: a fluid movement, like water leaking from ice. “You let yourselves in, did you not?” she said carelessly. “I should think you could let yourselves out.”
“Then let’s kill her and be done with it,” said Owain, lifting his sword, while the others puzzled over this.
“Whether you are done with it or not,” said the Queen, again with her small smile, “you will have no way of knowing, once you leave.”
“If we let you live,” said Peredur, “will not the black rain continue? The blight on our land will never end?”
“Never,” agreed the Queen, quite cheerfully. “All your children will die, all your crops will fail, all your people will slowly succumb to madness.”
“But why?” asked Peredur. “What purpose have you in tormenting us?”
The Queen inspected him. “What purpose has the wind in tormenting the trees, little man?”
Peredur struggled to breathe the frozen air. His chest felt aflame and there was a strange lightness behind his eyes. He reached clumsily for his sword with one wilted hand, but the baby lurched in his grasp and let out a wail.
“Let me, my lord,” said Owain. “I am strong enough now.”
“Do you know,” remarked the Queen, turning to Owain, “I believe you are. The ice has always protected me before, for it turns grown men to infants and warriors to weakened crones. But you have brought through the ice a child, and see how tall and handsome he has become! Quite the young soldier.”
Owain stared at her coldly.
“Wouldn’t you rather stay with me, young man?” the Queen whispered. “Just the two of us, alone in my palace? I can make it comfortable for you. I can make your life a thing of endless pleasure.”
“My lord,” said Owain loudly, “I’m going to finish this. Stay behind me, in case she has some final trickery in mind.”
Peredur gathered the children to him. They watched as Owain advanced towards the Queen, his naked sword raised.
They stood at the edge of a great bog. Behind them rose a wall of stone. The stones were running with water, as though there had recently been a heavy fall of rain; it dripped down and pooled into the mud at their feet. Peredur stared across the bog and could see only grey mist and the expanse of mossy peat.
“Where are we?” asked the men. “How did we get here?”
“I cannot seem to remember,” said Peredur, and as he said it a feeling of terrible dread came over him, for in fact he could remember nothing at all before this moment. “Search your minds, men. How came we to be in this bog?”
There was silence for a moment as they thought: the seeping silence of the bog.
“I don’t think it’s a memory, as such,” said the young boy Owain. “But it seems very clear to me that in a few moments’ time we shall set off walking through this bog. We’ll be following a mouse, which I shall take—” he stopped in puzzlement, reaching into his left glove—”out of my glove.” A mouse was in his hand. He said childishly, “How did that get there?”
“He’s right,” said one of the men. “We’re walking across that bog, and in a half hour or so we’ll come across a gallows. But the men on the gallows – they’re us. All of us, swinging there, dead, and we’ll be so horrified we’ll want to run off the path, except you’ll tell us not to, lord, for fear of sinking.”
“It’s strange,” agreed Peredur, “but I understand completely. I can—not remember, exactly—but I too have the sense of us soon reaching these gallows. And after that, we’ll come across a swarm of terrible giant beetles, if that doesn’t sound too far-fetched. Then…” He paused, and his eyes flitted towards Arawn. “And then we’ll continue on to the end of the bog. But as to how we came to be here, I remember nothing of it, friends. I might have been dropped here fresh as a newborn babe.”
They all agreed that this was the case, impossible though it seemed.
After a time they set off through the bog. They followed the mouse but did not really need to, for each of them could see where they must put their feet: each step was laid out plainly in their minds, as clear as recent memory. Soon they passed the gallows, just as they had known they would, and braced for the sight of themselves hanging from the nooses. Then came the giant beetles. Again the men were prepared and fended them off with few injuries, for they knew when and where the beetles would attack and could preempt their every movement.
As they continued, the swarm of beetles faded in their recollection. Already they could no longer remember the gallows.
“Keep your wits about you, men,” said Peredur uneasily. “I hope I am mistaken, but it seems to me that one of our number will shortly be lost to us. Stay on the path.”
Despite this warning, Arawn began to stumble. The men to either side of him wished to catch hold of his arms and save him but could not see themselves doing so, and if they could not see it then surely it could not happen, and so they did nothing.
“Stay still, Arawn!” Peredur called sharply.
“I know, my lord,” said Arawn, shaking his head as though to clear his vision. “I don’t want to move, but somehow, I can see the path my foot will take, in only a moment. I cannot avoid it.”
“For God’s sake,” bellowed Peredur, “grab him! Hold on to him!”
But the men could do nothing. Arawn, bewildered but resigned, lurched heavily to the side and sank up to his waist in mud.
“No!” cried Peredur. He felt unbearably helpless. He could see no other path in the strange curve of the future which had opened up where his memories used to be.
“It’s all right, my lord,” said Arawn. “This is the way it must be, somehow. I can’t remember anything for myself beyond this. There was only darkness if I stayed on that path.”
The men watched in silence as Arawn sank up to his neck.
“You are the bravest of men,” called Peredur, somewhat emotionally. “If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget your courage in the face of Fate.”
Arawn tried to nod, but the mud was already thick about his jaw. With wild calm, he closed his eyes and disappeared into the bog.
The men stood respectfully for a while, their heads bowed. After a few moments they felt their nerves begin to settle. Shortly after that, they could no longer remember why they were standing in the bog like this and began to feel foolish. They could all see themselves continuing along the path to the edge of the bog, and so they did, and thought no more of the events of a moment before, nor of Arawn.
It was with confidence, therefore, that they made their way out of the bog at last. They knew their horses would be waiting under the trees where they must have left them, although they couldn’t remember doing so. It was clear that they would ride back through the forest and find the black rain gone, the children awake and the crops resurgent. At every village they would be greeted by smiling fathers and mothers who would weep with relief and kiss their hands. Owain would find his family safe and well, though he would not remember ever having met them before. In time he would marry and raise children in his village, on land granted to him by Peredur, and when he grew old his grandsons would take up his burdens. He knew that he would die one day while walking to his daughter’s home in the next village. It would be peaceful: he would settle down in the sunshine for a short rest and never wake up.
Peredur, too, saw the entire span of his life stretching out before him. He and his wife would not grow old together, for childbirth would soon part them, but the prince would raise his daughter as wisely as he knew how, and although he would not be able to remember his wife he would find the echo of her every day in their child. All this he could see, and though it wounded him in some ways it strengthened him in others. It was no different, after all, from knowing one’s past, and that he knew no longer. While others around him would go on living their lives as normal, with their eyes pointed forwards into the unknown, he and his men would live theirs as though in reverse, stepping backwards into the future as though down a road they had already taken and still knew well.
So they went home, and nothing was ever the same for them again.
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Katie McIvor is a Scottish writer. She studied at the University of Cambridge and now lives in the Scottish Borders with her husband and baby daughter. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines including The Deadlands, The Dark, The Rumpus, and PseudoPod. You can find her on Bluesky @mckatie.bsky.social or on her website at katiemcivor.com. |